My grandmother died last year after a prolonged bout with various health complications. Imagine my sordid surprise when I realised I wasn’t terribly broken up about her passing away, especially when you take into account that she was the only grandparent I had ever known. An individual who had played a rather large role in my very existence, and is expectedly the centre of many a fond memory of mine.
On February 24, writer-director and occasional actor Harold Ramis passed away. Widely known for his various degrees of involvement in works of comedic art such as Caddyshack, Animal House, and Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis was someone who I’d never met, never seen in real life or even have any reason to acknowledge the passing away of … until it finally dawned on me: The man who played Egon Spengler was gone.
A fictitious character that’s played a rather significant role in shaping my childhood through a movie (and eventually franchise) that provided potent fuel to a fantasy that still encompasses all ages throughout any generation … or at least I hope it still does.
There is no such thing as an isolated life, you see. You can be the most sheltered, agoraphobic, I’ll-eat-the-moss-from-under-the-rock-I-live-before-I’m-seen-outside introvert, and that statement would still hold true for you.
In all the literature we read, movies we watch, music we listen to, or indeed any other form of artistic expression we indulge ourselves in, there’s always a part or two of the creators tucked away, parts that work quite directly towards shaping us into the people we become.
And it’s amazing how, under the right circumstances, those seedlings of various ideologies, from beings either unknown or fictitious, can be so much more influential over our lives than any form of actual human interaction.
It’s a scary thought for sure, just as much as it is beautiful, and most definitely begets further questions into “the artist’s responsibility” for an individual of a higher mental capacity to ruminate over it, but you don’t really need to have an analytical mind to appreciate just how art affects you as an individual.
As a kid, watching Dr Spengler take charge and march on down that narrow library aisle, on the trail of the ghost librarian, with Dr Venkman and Dr Stantz behind him (for once, refreshingly!), taught me how even the quietest, mousiest, most savvy individual can be, for want of a better term, badass; or how watching a young Eddie Vedder thrash around on a stool and scrawl “PRO-CHOICE” on his arm with a felt pen opened entirely new avenues of thinking to me as an impressionable adolescent.
These are lessons that I doubt even the most comprehensive anecdote or lecture from my own parents could’ve parlayed to me as effectively.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we often take for granted the fact that the people whose artistry we enjoy are human beings themselves, and as such are set to expire at any given moment; and I’ll be honest, Ramis’s death was the one I’d least expected to make me realise that, but then again there’s a certain level of poignancy to that, I suppose.
I wish there was a more concrete or poignant note I could end my thoughts on, but it’s obvious I hadn’t thought this through. So, in lieu of the traditional moral handout I’m going to conclude by thanking a handful of the folks who have had a tremendous impact on my life thus far (yes, it’s going to be quite navel gazing): Thank you members of Pearl Jam for the greatest one-sided conversation I’ve had in the form of No Code; thank you Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the incredible understanding of what it is like to be a kid in a grown up’s world; thank you Ken Levine for BioShock and making me realise that video games can be just as good as any other medium in delivering powerful messages; thank you Amy Hennig, thank you Gabe Newell, and thank you Joshua Homme for just being so darn cool!
For all those mentioned above, I pray gunga galunga ... gunga, gunga-lagunga.